


see me through

by lifeincantos



Series: falls the shadow [3]
Category: Tortall - Tamora Pierce
Genre: C'mon, EITHER WAY THEY'RE SOULMATES, F/M, Five Times, Gen, Life Partners, Shipping Optional
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-06
Updated: 2017-07-06
Packaged: 2018-11-28 18:22:29
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,262
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11423556
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lifeincantos/pseuds/lifeincantos
Summary: five times he loved her.





	see me through

**i.**

❛ So what am I to you? ❜ 

❛ What  _ **?**_ ❜  

Un _believable_. Here she is, this little dandelion puff of a girl with her face all smoothed over like it’s carved from stone, arms at her sides, chin stubborn, asking him  _what am I to you_. Questioning  **his**  judgement. Like he isn’t – oh for Mithros’  _sake_. 

Court has been  _burning_  with whispers for weeks. If it’s not one thing, it’s another. It’s Roald pacing a hole in the floor of Neal’s room, eyes tight and hands clenched behind his back as he murmurs reassurances to himself that Kalasin will be fine, that their family will be fine, that the kingdom will be fine. It’s his father with lines carved around his eyes that should take years to etch but have settled in only after a month. It’s Lady Veralidaine and her  _strangest_  of husbands gracing the halls of the castle while everything falls hushed around them. 

It’s the Lioness apparently trying to take a good and honest bite from his majesty and the Lord Stump raving about a  _Girl page_  in his oh so stumpy way. 

It is, long story brutally cut short, the stuff of legends. 

And it’s staring him down. 

For a moment  _ **(**_   _just_  one, thank you very much  _ **)**_  he cannot find the words. They had been good and plenty when Roald had let the conversation bleed from his sister’s thwarted attempts at knighthood to the worry over the Girl. Neal hadn’t even needed a moment before latching onto his requisite drawl and informing the noble and beleaguered prince that someone would be  _fool_  to take the Girl under his wing – and isn’t it  _lucky_  that Neal is already so stark and raving mad? 

What  _benevolence_. What  _insolence_. 

❛ – You’re a direct little thing, aren’t you? ❜ There’s a laugh stifled somewhere in those words. Isn’t insolence just the  _ **best**_  of traits? ❛ Let me show you the ropes.  _Quickly_ , now. ❜  


Gods all bless. They will need their holy grace to get through this, won’t they?

* * *

**ii.**  

It’s not  _ **fair**_  – Neal has read about the swooping highs and dizzying lows of true passion, and had thought himself well versed in all things emotional. But he has never – not like this, he’s practically  _choking_  on what he might have once called indignation but now knows that indignation pales in comparison. 

❛ No you won’t. ❜ He draws a breath that feels like steel sliding down the length of his chest and embedding its sharp point into his stomach. His lungs choke on it. ❛ We’re friends – I’ll help – ❜   


❛ Absolutely  _not_. ❜ She looks as stubborn as ever – still so stone faced, but her eyes as alive as they always are. Gods  _damn_  it, Mindelan, he’s not like you, he’s not going to have the strength to say it twice – but she just keeps going. ❛ No, no,  _no!_  They win twice then, don’t you see? Get to the assembly room. ❜   


No – he will  _ **not**_. He has not survived this long and this much to wilt like a flower and turn tail when there is something he can do. It will – yes, of  _course_  there will be consequences. But with his next iron strangled breath he pushes the thoughts of repeating these four years once more aside until – 

– Mother help him, he  _knows that look_. He can feel his face respond in kind, four years past, when he’d given the same to his father.  _I’ll be a knight_. He’d already decided – any further argument will bring nothing but pain. 

He looks down and away. She has won. Against him, always, but also against whatever  _disgrace_  of man who has taken Lalasa. 

_**(**_  he tries to tell himself that it’s not a retreat, when he turns – not to perform his exam but to get the Stump and halt the proceedings until she can join them. but his chest aches with every step and it’s like he’s watching her disappear somewhere he can’t follow.  _ **)**_  

* * *

**iii.**  

He manages to stay composed for all of twelve seconds, rattling off an even  _Kel, sit down, please_ , before frantically scrubbing his fingers through his hair. 

❛ It’s not my idea. ❜   


Ugh, gods  _damn_  her nearly perfected neutral affect –  **sure**  he can read her eyes. You’d be a fool not to see the emotions that live there, and a poorer person for it, but his heart is currently lodged somewhere in the vicinity of his throat and even on the best of days  _understanding_  is not always the logical consequence of  _reading_. 

❛ I argued – I  _ **told**_  them it should be you. They say it’s a bad idea. That people might talk. ❜ It tastes like ash on his tongue, poison corroding all the places within him that still have the audacity to be soft. She looks at him.  _Gods_. 

❛ — Lady Alanna asked me to be her squire. ❜   


Gods, gods, gods he  _ **sees**_  it. The moment the information is received, the moment she understands – he  **sees**  that precipice in her gaze, and can feel his stomach drop in kind. He can’t – when has he  ** _ever_**  wanted to take from her? In what world is this fair – that he’s been offered, that he  _sees_  the distance in Lady Alanna’s eyes and knows the pain it will cause but still accepts – ? 

❛ She’s a healer, Kel. ❜ If she’s going to know the truth, she’s going to know all of it. Yes,  _yes_  of  **course**  Neal would, will, agree in a heartbeat should everyone change their minds and make the sensible choice. ❛ You know I wish I had more training. Lady Alanna – she’ll be able to teach me. ❜   


_**(**_ gods, how  _awful_. how cruel, how  **unforgivable**  to ask that she not hate him for this.  _ **)**_  

❛ But I  _swear_  by Mithros I had no idea she would ask. ❜   


He realizes only when he meets her gaze that he has been purposefully looking away. That gaze that still holds onto him, that searches for injustices to see and correct, that gaze that pierces through him more effectively than a lance ever will. She looks at him but says nothing – is it his fault? Is he talking to fast, stumbling over his words – 

❛ You’re packing. Why are you packing, you’re not leaving? ❜   


❛ Lord Raoul asked me to be his squire. ❜   


And suddenly, in one fell swoop, the world tips back over once more. 

❛ Raoul? I’ll be switched. ❜ When he finds he can’t feel his knees anymore, he takes this as the sign to drop into the unoccupied chair and let his fingers return to their frantic ministrations through his hair. ❛ Gods all bless. ❜ Raoul.  _Raoul!_ Perhaps the Mother has heard his prayers all these years.   


❛ So you think this is good. ❜   


❛ I’m  _envious_. Lord Raoul’s got to be one of the easiest going men alive. My new knight mistress is famed for wielding sharp edges. ❜ Relief pulses golden through his veins. Kel will be with Raoul! How  _selfish_ , of course, to celebrate, but how  **outstanding**  a match! 

❛ I bet he and Lady Alanna planned this, ❜ he continues, caught in the rushing tide of his own enthusiasm. ❛ You know they’re good friends. And he’d have to know what people would say if she took you. ❜  


❛ That maybe I was right to look up at her all these years? That if anyone can teach me to be a lady knight, it’s her? ❜   


– Oh. 

❛ – You  _are_  angry. ❜ It had been  _too much_  to ask. He hates himself more than a little bit. There is nothing new about that.   


❛ Not with you. ❜ She’s looking away. He doesn’t not let hope kindle in his heart. ❛ Neal, I had a vision. ❜ 

❛ You? ❜ Curiosity has always been the strongest motivator of his life – he can shoulder the pain of hurting his best friend. He can be strong for her sake, and if she wants to tell him this –  _anything_ ,  **ever**  – he will listen.   


* * *

**iv.**  

It will take more than the chaos of war to part Neal from his instincts – particularly when those instincts have been honed by and fixated on Kel. Like the pull of the north star, he just  _ **knows**_. Gil passes under his hands; his heart shatters. Someone tugs on his arm; he follows. That same someone presses bandages into his hands, and at that he turns, expression sharp and pointed and furious, and prepares to unleash all the fury of the black god’s realm at – 

❛ You know you have to. ❜   


Gods  _damn_  it all, Dom is right. Neal wrenches his arm from his cousin’s grip, pulling the bandages toward himself with the haughty indignation of someone far away from a battle in the heart of enemy country who can afford all the time and energy haughty indignation requires. 

He  _knows_  that he must conserve what remains of his Gift. He’d be stupid, a poor trained healer, to ignore the feverish sweat of his brow and the way his pulse is thin and rapid. 

But he’d be a poorer friend and guardian to let it dwindle too fast. 

_**(**_  he is already a monster; let him be selfish a moment more.  _ **)**_  

❛ Dom. ❜   


His instincts are tingling, burning at the back of his throat, and he knows just as morning sun is cresting over the hill, that her time is up. He has tended to,  _killed_ , what he will. Now it’s time. For a moment, Dom merely stares dead eyed at him.  ** _(_**  when will this all  _end_.  _ **)**_  

Neal doesn’t have time to explain. 

They make their way over bodies, dead, alive, what have you, slipping past prying eyes, giving orders, ghosting to the stairs. He is as sure as he is stubborn that he will intercept her on the way down, because gods  _ **know**_  she will not do this to him – 

– He is completely unsurprised when it’s her body he finds, sprawled where she fell, bleeding out. His own heart stops and he’s sure he’s died as well because for a moment he believes that she  _is_. The blood rushes to his ears, tinny and ringing independent of the drain of his Gift. Of course, of  _course_  she – 

Even years later, the battle in its entirety is all fits and starts. He cannot piece together one cohesive memory; he will always see it linked chains. The way Dom grabs for her, then grabs for Neal’s elbow when he shoves him away. The pleading,  _we have to go, let me_  – Dom tries, Neal refuses, and gods he remembers the  _fucking cat_. Dead, it has to be, it has to be – Dom, take the  _cat_. She’s going to kill me if she wakes up without it. No matter – 

The trip down can’t be easy, but all he remembers is how not only his palms but his  _arms_ glow with emerald fire he cannot spare  _ **(**_ shut up, shut  ** _up_**  – to hell with it all, what good is his Gift if he won’t save her with it?  _ **)**_  and he holds her so close to his chest that he might be her undoing if the blood loss doesn’t get her first. 

Pouring, emptying the fire with every measured plucking out of threads from the wound, searching for her heartbeat – someone needs to cut in, someone needs to mock his sentimentality or he will drown in the memories of every cast down glance, every smile, every bruise, every argument.  _ **Live**_ , Mindelan. That’s an  _ **order**_ , Mindelan. 

_**(**_  there might have been better ways to go about it. he could have, should have, given more of himself to the dying. maybe they wouldn’t have been dying at all. but he knows, sick and cruel and vicious as it is, that given the chance – 

– he will  _ **always**_  save her. _ **)**_  

* * *

**v.**  

❛ How  _dare_  you have the nerve to look so –  _not dead_  this early. ❜

He doesn’t have to look to see the way she smiles with her eyes, but he does anyway. The light of the rising sun reflects against the hazel of her irises, coloring them with every breadth of emotion known and un. 

❛ Haven’t you met me? I always have the nerve. ❜   


❛  _Cheeky_. Drink. ❜   


Neal presses the mug into her hands. He’d have made one for himself, but he’s already had an entire pot’s worth of tea to get through the night spent working a double shift at the infirmary and he might just lose his nonexistent breakfast if he drinks anymore. He does nod primly when she takes hers, affecting an aggrieved air and leaning back on his arm. 

❛ One day you’ll learn to respect your elders, Mindelan. ❜   


❛ Oh? ❜   


He can  _ **hear**_  the laugh in her voice – a laugh that only blossoms when he finds his most aggrieved face and shoots her as wounded a look as he can manage at dawn. 

❛ Each grey hair is  _your_  fault. ❜ Neal jabs a finger at her and she has the grace to play along and look, even if mockingly, apologetic.   


❛ Your poor head, ❜ she murmurs. Neal tries not to grin.   


❛ The poorest. Most offended. Most betrayed. ❜    


❛ A price of war they don’t tell you about. ❜   


In another lifetime, maybe years ago when every tragedy was still a tragedy and their wounds were so new, there’d be no mirth in gallows humor. But all he can feel burgeoning in his chest is golden affection, warm and full, that he has carried since she’d first asked him,  _what am I to you?_  

❛ How foolhardy are we, then, to continue in such an unjust profession? ❜    


❛ Birds of a feather, ❜ she agrees with mock solemnity. When Neal slings an arm around her shoulder, she does not push him off. He melts into the contact. He thinks, unless he imagines it, that she might too.   


They watch the sun rise over New Hope. 

**Author's Note:**

> heartnowblossoming.tumblr.com 
> 
> comments & questions are loved.


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